


Bärchen

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Guns, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Spoilers for Chapters 58-59
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 04:38:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2256168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of the unnamed Military Policewoman seen at the end of Chapter 58 in the manga.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bärchen

**Author's Note:**

> [Kinkmeme prompt](http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/13546.html?thread=9018602#cmt9018602). I’ve kept the summary vague so as not to spoil anime fans.
> 
>  _Ursula_ is Latin, and _Bärchen_ German, for “little bear.” The latter is also a romantic endearment, though usually for men (it also means “teddy bear” in modern German).

“You have no idea how much I’m dreading it,” Ursula said to Detmar last night, after they made love.

“We don’t have a choice, _Bärchen,_ ” he said, stroking her hair. He’d told her back in their training days that it wasn’t just a pet name, but the meaning of her given name, which came from some language nobody speaks anymore. She’s pretty sharp herself — one reason he loves her so, he always says — but Detmar was the brains of the 102nd. She misses the days they’d sneak off together to sit in the woods and read from the big heretical book his grandmother left him. They’ve both since learned not to court danger unless it’s absolutely necessary.

“People are going to die,” she said ruefully.

“People are dying _now,_ ” he pointed out, twirling some of her hair around his fingers. “Edward Reeves. The Survey Corps killed him, and he was pretty powerful. You think they’ll stop with him?”

“But Reeves was conspiring with them, and they turned on him. I mean, I don’t condone what they did,” she added quickly, “but it’s not the same thing as shooting down innocent people out in the street.”

“How many innocent people will Erwin Smith take down if we let him?” Detmar closed his eyes. “Have you ever met him, Ursula?”

“No, _Liebling_ , I haven’t.” There was never any opportunity. Once she got her final grades, she never considered any other legion than the MPs. How else was she going to pay Mutti’s doctor bills, get Mutti and Gisel and Michael out of that shithole apartment in Trost and into their nice little house in Ehrmich? Then there’s the pension the MPs pay out to the survivors of police killed in action. Ursula doesn’t have to worry about the three of them anymore, and that alone makes her decision worthwhile.

Detmar hasn’t quite _met_ Erwin Smith, but he’s seen him speak. After they graduated, his conscience was pulling at him. Without telling her beforehand, he showed up for Commander Smith’s speech to his potential new recruits… and walked away before it ended.

“He’s a fanatic,” Detmar said, voice dropping in abhorrence. “Not that different from the Wallist bastards, even if he talks a better game. How many people in Stohess died because of him — and for nothing in the end? And his men are all crazy, too. He’s got those headcases from the 104th, including the titan kid, and that homicidal scientist, and… Levi.” He spits out the Survey Corps captain’s name in disgust. She shudders. Both of them have read his record; neither of them is convinced he does more good as a soldier fighting outside the Walls than he would as ashes fertilizing a field. “They all think they’re on the side of good. That makes them more dangerous than men who are just out for themselves.”

She supposes he’s right. But sometimes she wishes she worked with people other than first-year recruits who cared about anything besides themselves. The Military Police offers good salaries, comfortable living quarters, job security, and, out of all three legions, the jobs with the lowest overall risk of harm. It also offers vicious internal politics, superiors who don’t give a shit about you, and a pervasive cynicism that seeps into everything and corrodes it.

Ursula has to admit that when she and Detmar were first tapped for the special operation, she felt a stab of excitement. It would be dangerous as hell, of course, but they’re among the elite MPs who have kept up their skills on 3DMG and weaponry, and if anyone can handle the job they can.

And at least she’d be doing something useful for humanity. She can count on the fingers of one hand how many times she’s had that feeling in her two years with the MP. For all her continued, rigorous training on Gear, guns, and blades, she mostly does guard duty or paperwork. Or she fetches a third or fifth or ninth beer for drunken superior officers playing poker, and they slap her on the ass and call her _“Schatzi.”_ She always walks away biting her tongue and thinking of Mutti in the old apartment, wheezing and gasping because the damned landlord wouldn’t do anything about the mold. Mutti doesn’t wheeze anymore.

At least it’s only a little groping now and again. Between the little bit of tenure she now has (read: younger, fresher girls for the picking) and Detmar getting her the engagement ring as soon as he could, she hasn’t been pinned against the wall in a deserted hallway and forced to her knees in more than a year.

She still goes around with a little flask of mint water in her trouser pocket. Just in case.

Her enthusiasm for the mission declined in direct proportion to how many training sessions they had with Captain Ackerman. No question, he’s a master of both the 3DMG and the anti-personnel cannon. But, Rose and Sina, the man makes her flesh creep. Not in a sexual way. More that he has this way of looking at you like he’s trying to imagine how your skin would look tacked up on his wall. He never says anything about taking care not to harm innocent bystanders. Ursula knows without asking that he simply doesn’t give a shit.

“My thoughts exactly, _Bärchen,_ ” Detmar said to her one evening after training, over glasses of vine at the Rearing Unicorn. Detmar doesn’t just trust her instincts; he often shares them. She reached across the little table and squeezed his hand when he said that. He squeezed back and added, “We have to put up with him for just a little while longer and learn what we can from him, and we’ll be more careful about civilians than he expects us to be. If the operation goes off perfectly, we won’t have to deal that much with him anymore.”

She thinks about that as she stands on the sloping roof of a public inn in Trost, tense as a drawn bow, listening to gunfire and waiting for her squad leader, Torsten, to signal. Torsten is a graduate of the 97th Trainees Squad and the only MP superior she’s ever had whom she wouldn’t mind dying beside, or for.

She thinks, too, about the bonus she’ll get after this mission. Mutti’s doing okay now, but Gisel would probably like to be able to buy a few new dresses, to keep up with her fashionable new crowd of friends. Maybe it’ll help her snag a rich husband more easily. Michael’s birthday is coming up, and Ursula wants to surprise him with something nice. She’s sure he could use the morale boost; the first year of training is always a bitch. Whatever’s left over, that’ll go into the nest egg she and Detmar have been building.

Then Torsten raises his hand, and he, Ursula, Detmar, Rukhsana, and Widimir soar into the air. And over the gunfire, Ursula hears a high-pitched cry of terror: _“They’re coming!”_

It came from their target below, a horse-drawn cart. She’s too high up to see who’s in it or who’s riding ahead of it.

Then two people rise from the cart to meet them. One is a dark-haired young woman with strangely tilted eyes and an expression that radiates bloodlust. That would be the prodigy of the 104th, the one who killed Edward Reeves’ two bodyguards at Wall Rose. Who first killed a man when she was nine years old.

Ursula recognizes the other immediately. Every hair she possesses stands on end.

Detmar recognizes him, too. His face set hard with determination, he thrusts his left-hand cannon upward, takes aim, and pulls the trigger.

Levi’s sword arm comes down in a blurred, shining arc.

The bullet ricochets off his blade and into Detmar’s right eye.

Ursula’s throat closes up. She forces her eyes to stay level, won’t let herself watch him fall. She can mourn him later. After she’s turned that little piece of human garbage and his subordinates into carrion.

From the cart below she hears another voice, a little deeper than the first but quite young: “Shit! Another person’s died!”

Her grip tightens on both her cannon. _He was more than just “another person,” you son of a bitch._

The other MPs move toward the place in the air where Detmar was a moment ago. They obscure Ursula’s view of Levi. She chokes back a burst of thwarted rage and turns toward the cart instead.

 _The driver. Take out the driver,_ she thinks.

As she swoops and aims, she sees his face, shrouded in the green hood of his legion’s cloak with a few licks of blond hair sticking out. _What the fuck. He looks like he’s eight years old. Is the Survey Corps recruiting actual children nowadays?!_ He looks up at her, reins wound tight around his hands. He looks at the cannon in her hand. He looks absolutely terrified.

She thinks of Michael, when he was still little and his hair still fair.

Pain suddenly blossoms from the back of Ursula’s skull through her entire head. It wasn’t a bullet or blade; it was something blunt. She hears a word shouted out that makes no sense as she hits the floor of the cart face first. Her nose fills with blood, dripping down her throat, and her eyes water as her face throbs from forehead to lips.

Through the white noise in her head she hears the racking of a rifle.

 _Get up,_ Bärchen _. Get up now. Fight, or at least die on your feet._

 _Yes,_ Liebling _._

As she dizzily pushes herself up from the floor, she hears a voice, the second one she heard earlier, she thinks, scream, _**“Don’t move!!”**_

The first voice, the high-pitched one — the driver — asks something incredulously, angrily. It sounds like a name. She isn’t entirely sure. Her head is still ringing pretty hard.

She turns her head.

A tall, lanky kid, a boy in some kind of hick hat, has the rifle trained on her. His hands are shaking on the forestock and the grip. His eyes are wide. Sweat rolls down his face.

Ursula knows instantly that he doesn’t want to shoot her.

_I’m sorry, kid. I don’t want to do this, either._

She braces her palms on the floor of the cart and pushes herself upward.

 _ **“I said don’t move!!”**_ the boy screams.

She thrusts her right arm up and out. The barrel of her cannon rings deafeningly against his gunstock, steel on steel. Then his rifle is flying into the air and he’s fallen on his ass in the corner of the cart, his arms draped over the sides.

She’s on her feet. Racking the cannon. Pointing it down into his face.

He gasps softly. He looks afraid, but not utterly terrified, like he did a moment ago.

_You were more afraid to kill me than you are to die._

It’s weird, how time slows down in battle. In a fraction of a second that expands to encompass eternity, she takes him in. Light brown hair, light brown eyes. Kind of a long face, but not a bad-looking one. Probably has a nice smile in other circumstances.

 _Why’d you join the Survey Corps, kid?_ she thinks. _I don’t care how good you are on 3DMG, you don’t have the heart for this shit. Why didn’t you join the MPs? I bet you have a mother who really loves you. Maybe even a father who stuck around. You could’ve taken care of them for the rest of their lives, and you and some lucky woman or man could’ve had a nice life together, maybe raised some kids who wouldn’t have had to take care of you long before you got old—_

She hears the same name as before screamed again, this time by a new voice, a female one. _John!_ , it sounds like.

She hears the shot and feels the air thrum around her before she feels the bullet open up her throat.

The force of impact turns her head on what remains of her neck. As she goes down for the second and final time, out of the corner of her eye she sees the driver: blue eyes wide under drawn brows, teeth bared, knuckles white around the grip of the revolver.

Ursula’s second-to-last thought is, _I guess you weren’t eight years old after all._

Her last thought is, _I hope those lazy assholes in payroll don’t fuck up your pension, Mutti._


End file.
